LONDON (Reuters) – British Prime Minister Boris Johnson warned on Tuesday that the rapid drop in deaths from COVID-19 was greatly reduced to a three-month closure, not the vaccination program, and that cases would increase once more as restrictions were reduced.
The UK launched its inoculation in December and has already offered a first shot to all over-50s, vulnerable clinical and health workers. The country is only behind Israel in the proportion of its population that has received at least one dose.
However, this release was followed a month later by a third blockade in early January to deal with growing infections caused by the “Kent” variant of the virus. Since February, daily infections, hospitalizations, and deaths have dropped dramatically.
“The bulk of the work on reducing the disease has been done through the blockade,” Johnson said Tuesday, adding that there was no reason to change the roadmap for reopening the economy.
“As we unlock, the result will inevitably be that we will see more infections and unfortunately we will see more hospitalizations and deaths.”
With the conditions improved, England reopened all shops, hairdressers, gyms and pub gardens on Monday and Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales will have to reopen different elements of their societies in the coming weeks.
Vaccine launch also increased on Tuesday when Moderna became the third vaccine offered in England after AstraZeneca and one from Pfizer-BioNTech.
This will help keep Britain on track to achieve the goal of offering vaccination to all adults by the end of July.
Modern, already available in the United States and Europe, uses the same mRNA technology as Pfizer shots, but can be stored at normal temperatures in the refrigerator, unlike its rival U.S. vaccine, which is ‘must be stored and shipped at extremely low temperatures.
On Tuesday, NHS England said people aged 45 and over could already book appointments to receive a vaccine against COVID-19. For those categories that already offered vaccine, it was said that 95% of eligible people had accepted the offer.
However, in another note of caution to optimism, the government announced an extension of so-called overvoltage tests in the districts of Lambeth and Wandsworth, south London, to detect cases of the variant first found in South Africa.
There have been 74 confirmed and probable cases of the coronavirus variant, known as B.1.351, in municipalities and there is concern that vaccines will be less effective against it.
“The important thing will be to watch out: if the South African variant has taken off and we’ll probably know in two or three weeks, we may need to pause to reopen a bit,” James Naismith, professor of structural biology at Oxford University and director of the Rosalind Franklin Institute, told BBC Radio.
With more than 127,000 deaths, the UK has the fifth highest death toll in the world for COVID-19.